Nine’s trouble slots

As predicted this week Nine has pulled the poorly rating
Nanny 911 from its Monday night schedule and exposed its lack of
resources in the ratings cupboard. To plug the hole over the next
fortnight, programmer Michael Healey is slotting in one-hour specials
of the best of Bert Newton. Nine owns the copyright to Newton’s years
of appearances on its network.

More
back to the future and cocoonism! Bert will rate better than Nanny 911, which
started poorly two Mondays ago and then fell to just above 810,000
viewers last Monday. Few programs escape the axe when viewing figures
are this low, unless it’s a Saturday night or late in the evening (Like
Seven’s Last Man Standing and Boston Legal).

The 7:30pm slot is
probably Nine’s biggest problem along with the 5:30pm weeknight hole and the 7:30pm
Friday evening disaster area. Nine’s short-term approach isn’t working – it needs a show for the Monday timeslot that
will work like Friends did for years.

Last night’s TV ratings

The Winners

Nine but it was a very close night, thanks to Nine News and A
Current Affair recovering their poise. Temptation won at 7pm,
making for a better 6 to 7:30 pm for Nine than Monday or Tuesday nights. Seven’s
Beyond Tomorrow had 1.36 million people at 7:30pm. CSI Miami at 8:30
pm beat Ten’s House by just under 1,000 viewers.
The Losers

Seven’s 24 had 1.166 million
people on its second episode outing – down from Monday’s 1.386 million. Interest seems to be cooling
fast among Aussie viewers, though 1.16 million people was
the average for two hours, which helped Seven nudge up very close to
Nine.
News & CA

Nine News beat Seven nationally but Seven News won Sydney and closed the gap in Melbourne to less than 40,000 viewers. ACA was back in front of Today Tonight nationally and in Sydney
and Melbourne.
ACA was the most watched program last night! ABC News attracted 1.11 million
viewers, while the 7:30 Report (sans Red Kerry again) got 980,000 people.
The Stats

Nine won nationally with 27.7% to Seven with 27.3%, Ten on
23.2%, the ABC with 15.7% and SBS on 6.1%.
Glenn Dyer’s
comments

A good comeback by Nine, but with Lost tonight, Nine
will be under pressure. The Friday night AFL and NRL games could decide the
week’s winner, but Seven is still having a good week, especially around the
5:30pm to 7:30pm timeslots which set the tone for the rest of the night on
most occasions. Seven is showing once again that you don’t have to win
to win: it has clipped Nine and Ten’s shares, dragged their overall
audience figures lower, while its share remains much higher than last year. That
means more revenue to Seven and less to Nine and Ten. Nine is still feeling
the pain more than anyone else!

Peter Fray

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